News

All Colquitt EMC offices will remain closed tomorrow, Monday, September 30, as we focus our resources on power restoration efforts. We appreciate your patience and understanding during this time.

My fellow members, We continue our efforts to restore service to all our members. From a peak number of over 67,000 outages, we now sit at about 48,000 outages. From a workforce perspective, with Idalia and Debby, we had approximately 450 working personnel. With Helene, we are currently at 770 and may continue to ramp that workforce upward as other assets become available. Each time we increase this number, we are entering new territory with managing personnel and ensuring that they work...

My fellow members, Colquitt EMC continues to work diligently at restoring power throughout our system. Contract crews have arrived and began working alongside our crews. Unfortunately, many of our substations are still offline. We have been in contact with GTC and Georgia Power and are eagerly waiting for those substations to be back up and running. I would like to take a moment to discuss the nature of the work that our personnel are up against. Under normal circumstances, we expect...

My fellow members, As you know, Hurricane Helene has been a significant hurricane and has devastated our system. It has exceeded the damage that we have seen from prior storms such as Idalia and Debby. The windspeed that was attributed to Helene was more than 140 mph at landfall. I believe Idalia was around 120 mph at landfall. With this storm, there are roughly 1,000 broken power poles that need to be changed out in comparison to roughly 500 broken power poles with Hurricane...

We are wrapping up Day One of our Hurricane Helene Restoration Effort. 95% of our contract personnel arrived today. The rest will arrive tomorrow. Mitchell EMC will also be joining us to provide mutual aid. Crews have started the restoration process. As we have stated in previous updates, this is likely to be a lengthy outage event due to the widespread damage. As always, we appreciate your patience. We will have employees working in shifts around the clock until power is restored to all...

My fellow members, Hurricane Helene has come through our system and is moving toward the mid-Atlantic and Ohio Valley States. Last night and early morning, Helene made a north-northeast turn as opposed to the projected northerly path. This change resulted in more of a direct hit to Lowndes and Berrien Counties as opposed to affecting more of our westerly area such as Quitman and Moultrie. The strength of Helene was much greater than Idalia or Debby. We have significant damage in all...

Due to safety concerns, Colquitt EMC will be unable to respond to outages until the winds are below 35 MPH. The winds are expected to be above 35 MPH between 8:00 PM tonight and daylight tomorrow morning. Thank you for your patience and understanding!

My fellow members, The latest indications on Hurricane Helene have become more consistent. The path traveling through our service territory hasn’t changed very much today. We are still expecting a landfall for Helene sometime before midnight. As of 4:00 PM, the sustained winds are predicted to be in the 130 MPH range. Currently, there are no indications that it will intensify past that. We are very concerned with this hurricane achieving this high wind speed right before landfall. We...

Due to the impending hurricane, all Colquitt EMC offices will close for business at 3 PM today, September 26, 2024. The safety of our employees and members is our top priority during this time. We appreciate your understanding and encourage everyone to stay safe as we navigate through the storm. Please stay tuned for further updates regarding our operations.

My fellow members, Colquitt EMC is preparing for the imminent landfall of Hurricane Helene. We are carefully watching the strength of the hurricane and its projected path. As of this update, Helene will make landfall as a Category Three Hurricane somewhere in the Big Bend of Florida. As time has progressed the projected path has come closer and closer to the paths taken by Idalia and Debby this previous year. Both of those storms were devastating for Colquitt EMC. They each produced...

My fellow members, A couple of changes occurred with Helene. It appears with the speed at which Helene is moving, it will make landfall around 8:00 PM on Thursday, September 26. The second change is that it appears the track is slightly more to the west. We are continuing to brace for the impact of a Category 3 Hurricane. We have made all possible preparations. This includes scheduling additional personnel, ensuring we have sufficient material to rebuild with, and making sure all...

My fellow members, All indications of Hurricane Helene continue to bear down on the Big Bend area of Florida. Recent changes indicate that it may be even more powerful than what was predicted 24 hours ago. They are now projecting that Helene will be a Category 3 Hurricane at landfall. As we have tracked Helene, it appeared that it followed a path like Idalia and Debby. More recent projections show it coming in a little more to the west, but still moving through Colquitt EMC’s...